Category Archive:Journalism

In early 2016 The Independent published an article about Charles Dickens and his many publishing ventures such as Household Words, Household Narrative and All the Year Round, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Here’s why.

The author of the piece, Jeremy Parrott, ¹ described how he had unravelled the roll call of contributors to these journals which up until his research had largely remained something of a mystery. Within his article he refers to the University of Buckingham’s onlinedigitised archive of these magazines which can be accessed by researchers and the public alike. I was especially intrigued with this extract from the article:

“As well as staff writers for the magazine, Dickens had a small group of regulars including the nigh-indefatigable Walter Thornbury who wrote close to 200 pieces for All the Year Round and Household Words before dying of exhaustion in a mental asylum at the age of 48″.²

It would seem that in the service of Household Words and All the Year Round Thornbury travelled widely, writing articles that vividly depicted the United States and Palestine, the Iberian Peninsula, and European Turkey. He also wrote a long series of articles in All the Year Round entitled “Old Stories Retold”, where he covered topics such as “Trafalgar in 1805”, “Bombardment of Algiers in 1816”, “The Assassination of Mr. Perceval in 1812”, “The Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820”, “The Two Great Murders in the Ratcliffe Highway in 1811”, and “The Resurrection Men—Burke and Hare, in 1829”.

Apparently the series was curtailed due to Dickens dislike of their sanguinary and salacious content!

You can read more about Walter George Thornbury, Dickens’ indefatigable writer here

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